Big Tech bosses face Congress scrutiny

The heads of the four largest tech companies in the world will today answer questions in a Congress hearing on possible anti-competitive practices.

David Shepardson and Nandita Bose reported the news for Reuters:

The chief executives of four of the world’s largest tech companies, Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Facebook Inc (FB.O), Apple (AAPL.O) and Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O), plan to argue in a congressional hearing on antitrust on Wednesday that they face intense competition from each other and from other rivals.

The testimony from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook, which was released Tuesday, portrays four chief executives who are looking over their shoulders at competitors who could render them obsolete.

Ryan Tracy, John D. McKinnon, and Emily Glazer from the Wall Street Journal wrote:

Their testimony could help build public pressure for government action, especially if the back-and-forth with lawmakers raises new concerns about the way the big technology companies operate.

“These platforms have been allowed to run wild and free from really any constraints,” Rep. David Cicilline (D., R.I.), the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview. “The responsibility we have is to make clear what the impacts are of the lack of competition in the digital marketplace.”

Engadget’s Nicole Lee noted:

Unsurprisingly, Bezos, Pichai, Zuckerberg and Cook claimed that their businesses are good for the American economy. Bezos, for example, said that Amazon is often a source of revenue for small and medium-sized businesses. Similarly, Pichai said that Google often provides advertising, revenue and assistance for small businesses, and invests significantly in new technologies that could help advance breakthroughs in medicine and science. Cook mentioned that the App Store ecosystem facilitated over $138 billion in the US economy in 2019, as well as half a trillion worldwide. Zuckerberg made his usual case that Facebook is instrumental in connecting the world, which he claims is a global good.